


fate steps in (and sees you through)

by paperclipbitch



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Cara is just there for the food, Crack Treated Seriously, Disney, Disney World & Disneyland, Fatherhood, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, Unbeta'd, Vacation, it's a small world, look on my works ye mighty and despair, mild feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24011095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: “I don’t want to go to Disney World,” Din tells Greef.“The trip to Disney World isn’t foryou,” Greef replies, “it’s for the baby.  You just have to be there to facilitate it.”Cara is laughing so hard she’s in danger of spitting caf all over the table.“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Din says to her, because he’s had a chance to look at the initial information on the puck, “he’s bought you a ticket too.”
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune, Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 167





	fate steps in (and sees you through)

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about this to cheer myself up for about two months, and then lockdown happened, and I decided to write it down. Which is why it's got no chill at all and is wildly long. Title taken from _When You Wish Upon A Star_ , for obvious reasons.
> 
> Copious notes at the end, but to start off:  
> 1) Set post-canon, only no one died, and the Child is safe forever and always, hurrah.  
> 2) In this canon, obvs Disney does not own Star Wars, do not ask about Galaxy's Edge, it isn't there, I didn't want my brain to explode.  
> 2i) I don't know why everyone can understand and read English when everything should be in Basic, let's just... go with it.  
> 3) Apparently you can read this if you haven't seen the show (though you should) so you can enjoy even if all you've seen are gifs of Baby Yoda.  
> 4) A note on names: I'm calling Mando "Din" throughout because it's a soft fic, and I've worked around the fact the Child doesn't have a name.

**0.**

Overall, Din tries not to think too hard about what life was like for the Child before he found him. Fifty years is a long time, and it’s too easy to spiral into wondering if the baby had a family once, people who looked like him and who loved him, or if he’s always been considered some kind of commodity, worth tracking down and trading, but not worth treating like a sentient person. When Din found him, the Child was wary and alone, but he wasn’t visibly mistreated or malnourished: he tries to hope that if no one was particularly kind to him while keeping him hidden away, then at least no one was particularly cruel either. Still, when faced with his child’s curiosity, exuberance, and occasional deliberate misbehaviour, Din hasn’t been able to avoid wondering how exactly they kept the kid reasonably docile and in one place for any length of time.

His own childhood is something Din only thinks about with caution, in small rationed pieces he can hold in his cupped hands until the stinging gets too much. By the time he became a Mandalorian Foundling, he was no longer a child; Foundlings are treated with respect, with care, but they are also brought up with the creed, and there are expectations of them. If he has a small handful of memories of being curled up with his parents, watching a viewscreen, he has none from his Mandalorian upbringing, and the specifics are long lost. He feels he has only the vaguest idea of what this baby needs, of how he is supposed to raise the Child. There are some moments when Din sees endless, boundless wisdom sparkling behind those enormous eyes, and then, at the next moment, the Child is trying to eat part of his ship, making annoyed sounds when whatever bolt he’s acquired is too hard for his teeth, and tastes of bitter oil. 

In the end, it’s actually Greef who inadvertently finds out something about the Child’s life before he was rescued. Din’s work continues to be frequently unsafe and consistently inappropriate for a baby, and although he does his best to keep his son with him on jobs, there are times when he needs a rest from constantly checking that the kid hasn’t gotten some recklessly awful idea into his head, and when he needs to concentrate solely on himself. Cara has agreed that she can babysit for a few days; she claims reluctance every time, but Din is well aware that if she didn’t want to care for the Child, she wouldn’t volunteer so readily. His child is always returned to him happy and in one piece, and Din has to work under the assumption that he’s been safer than he would have been with him, whatever he’s been up to in his absence. Din tries to insist that Cara is the only one looking after the child, but he’s only too aware that it’s exhausting trying to keep the tiny boy and his entire lack of self-preservation protected, so if Greef has taken the occasional shift, he has to bite his tongue against protesting that Greef doesn’t know the first thing about raising children.

This time, with a surprising lack of bruising under his armour, and a comfortable amount of credits in his account, Din lets himself into Cara’s home to find Greef sprawled on the couch, the Child perched on a pile of cushions beside him. Upon seeing Din, the Child lets out a delighted squeal, ears shooting upwards, and immediately starts scrambling down from the cushions. They immediately start toppling, and it’s only Greef’s quick moving that stops the Child from hitting the floor; he gives Din a wry smile as he hands the baby over, babbling merrily and waving his arms. Something small relaxes in Din as he holds the little body to his chest, the baby’s ears quivering happily.

Against the opposite wall, Cara’s massive viewscreen is currently tuned to some kind of brightly-coloured animation; animals Din doesn’t recognise are singing together, swirling around at dizzying speed. It’s been a long time since Din has taken much interest in broadcasts, outside of the occasional New Republic news report, but he does remember from a long time ago having his own screen viewing restricted, and the Mandalorians didn’t believe in showing fictional programming to their Foundlings. He hasn’t shown the Child anything on a viewscreen, although it seems that this decision has not been unanimous amongst his caregivers.

“This is how you keep him quiet?” he asks, tilting his head toward the noisy animation.

Greef shrugs. “He turned it on, not me.” He waves a hand at the warbling creatures. “I try to change it, he just waves his hands and it goes back to this stuff.”

Looking down, Din can see that his son has twisted in his arms, one small hand clinging affectionately to the edge of one of his gauntlets, attention fixed back on the screen. He looks rapt. 

“What is it?” Din asks, because he knows there are millions of different waves of broadcasts out in the galaxy, enough to get lost in unless you know your planet or race’s specific channels, and out of all of them, his kid likes this one?

“They’re called Disney,” Greef says, in a resigned sort of voice that tells Din that he’s seen a lot of these things with the Child. “They import them out of some little wet human planet in the middle of nowhere, they don’t make much else, but people go nuts for these things.” He nods at the baby. “The kid knew exactly where to find them, I’ve had nothing to do with it.”

Din looks at his son’s rapt expression as he stares at the animation: the singing has stopped, but there’s still a lot going on. He realises that _this_ is certainly one way to keep the Child docile; perhaps that’s what the Nikto mercenaries did while keeping him in that compound. It’s better than some of the things he’s been trying not to imagine, anyway. Eventually, sensing Din’s gaze on him, the Child looks up, ears pricking inquisitively, before he looks back at the screen with an encouraging head tilt.

“There’s not that much of it left,” Greef offers, and Din sighs, quietly, and goes to sit on the couch, settling the baby comfortably in his lap. He might as well start learning about whatever this Disney stuff is; he has a sneaking suspicion he’s only going to have to get more familiar with it in the coming months.

**1.**

“What you need, Mando, is a vacation,” Greef announces.

He can’t see the suspicious expression on Din’s face, but he’s pretty sure Greef can sense it coming through the helmet anyway. Cara makes an amused sound into her drink.

“What have you done,” Din says evenly.

“Well,” and here, Greef’s face splits into a wide grin that Din doesn’t trust for a second, “I’ve been thinking. In my line of work, in my life, hard work gets rewards. Favours are repaid.” Din waits, watches a variety of expressions flit across Cara’s face. “The baby saved my life,” Greef finally continues, “and I haven’t found a way to thank him until now.”

The Child is sat in another of Kuiil’s modified pods, ignoring them all while he focuses happily on a bowl of broth Cara threatened the bartender into producing from somewhere. Din looks at him, and then back at Greef.

“What have you done,” he says again.

Greef leans over to slide an information puck across the table, although it looks different to the bounty tracking ones he usually hands out. “I’ve bought you a vacation,” he says, “to Disney World.”

The Child has just taken an enormous slurp of his broth – Din suspects he’s supposed to be working on training that bad habit out of him, but he hasn’t gotten there yet – so he doesn’t hear, which is probably just as well; Din has been working hard to keep the existence of multiple enormous theme parks based on the movies his son loves so much a secret, precisely so that this sort of situation wouldn’t arise.

“I don’t want to go to Disney World,” he tells Greef.

“The trip to Disney World isn’t for _you_ ,” Greef replies, “it’s for the baby. You just have to be there to facilitate it.”

Cara is laughing so hard she’s in danger of spitting caf all over the table.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Din says to her, because he’s had a chance to look at the initial information on the puck, “he’s bought you a ticket too.”

Cara slams her cup down and turns to stare at Greef. “Why am I going?” she demands. “Why aren’t you going?”

Greef raises his hands. “I don’t want to go to Disney World.”

“Why does anyone else have to go at all?” Cara asks.

“The kid’s a handful,” Greef points out, “Mando’s going to need the back-up.”

Only Greef can give a gift that is somehow also a punishment, Din reflects, aware that the contented slurping noises have stopped, and that the Child is looking between all of them, ears twitching with interest, and while Din is still establishing how much his child understands – or _chooses_ to understand, anyway – he is almost certain that he’s picked up on the repeated word “Disney”. He sighs, heavily.

“You’d better have sprung for a deluxe package,” Cara says, scowling.

“I have,” Greef smiles blithely, a man who wasn’t sure he was going to get away with this without getting punched, but finally seeing that he’s won, “send lots of pictures.”

**2.**

Din always plans ahead, particularly because bounty hunting is full of endless unpleasant surprises, and the way to deal with those is to have multiple back-up plans, and a mental map of the local area. He throws himself into researching Disney World with the same level of dedication; he’s never been to Earth before, and can’t remember the last time he went somewhere solely for _fun_ : he is leaving nothing at all to chance.

Earth has been exporting their Disney cartoons and movies to the wider universe for around forty standard years now, which might explain why some of the older characters ring very faint bells in the back of Din’s mind. While the planet has largely remained obscure, the popularity of the Disney products has been almost disproportionate, initially spreading through human-populated worlds and then being picked up by many other races too. While Earth remains a primarily human planet, it has been having visitors from various galaxies for many years now, most of them heading for one of the planet’s multiple Disney theme parks, and there are more policies to accommodate non-human and non-earth-dwelling customers than Din was expecting. 

Kuiil sends a new transport pod, quite small and lightweight, the front lowered with a small rail so that the Child can stand up and look about without falling out, a comfortable seating pad, and enough space for him to lie down and sleep with the sides closed to provide a dark and quiet environment. Manually pushed strollers seem to be the main way children are transported in the Parks, but these pods are also specifically allowed, and Din catches sight of a few in promotional images of crowds, babies of various races peering about from their vantage points. Kuiil’s detailed yet stylistically abrupt accompanying message eventually admits that he would not be averse to be receiving pictures of the Child enjoying himself either, and Din concludes that Greef and Kuiil worked together on this plan more than it initially appears; the new cradle arrived suspiciously quickly, after all.

If the Child has connected that he’s being taken, under vague duress, to a place proclaiming itself to be the happiest place in the galaxy, and themed almost entirely around his favourite cartoons, he gives no indication of it, happily continuing life as normal. Din spends much of his time on the _Razor Crest_ trying to ensure his son is vaguely where he is supposed to be, ever aware that one of these days he’s going to realise there’s an ominous silence and discover that the baby has frozen himself into carbonite. Which might keep him quiet and still for a while, but is still something a parent should probably not allow to happen.

While Din reads up on attractions and rides, weather and languages, and the slightly different rules that apply in some cases to non-humans, he also keeps an eye on the Child’s viewscreen time. Normally he tries to avoid watching the various Disney cartoons unless the baby is insistent that he watch one, dragging at Din and sulking until he wearily sits down to watch too, but now he pays attention to which films and characters his son likes, which things make his ears perk up with excitement, and which scary parts make him shrink back, ears drooping. Sometimes, whatever is airing on the Disney wavelength isn’t of interest to the Child, and he grumpily waves his little hand at the screen until it turns off, or skips to an entirely different bandwidth containing some other Disney content. There’s an overwhelmingly large amount of… _stuff_ that Disney has produced, and Din finds himself glad that the Child isn’t indiscriminately enamoured of all of it. It also helps him prepare for the trip, for things he doesn’t need to put himself through after all.

Cara’s idea of preparation is to reluctantly pack some warm-weather appropriate clothing, and to get Omera to send her two large bottles of spotchka, which she decants into vessels which will get through human security with no questions asked. She arrives on the _Razor Crest_ the night before they’re due to travel, dumps her pack in the hold and rests the Child on her hip as he chirps and babbles at her.

“You think he has any idea where we’re going?” she asks.

“I don’t,” Din replies. “We’ll probably get there and he’ll hate it.”

“Nah,” Cara says, absently stroking one of the baby’s ears with a fingertip, “he’ll have an incredible, magical time, the whole thing will be wonderful and it’ll blow his little mind.”

A suspicion Din has been building from Cara’s brisk but plentiful communications finally crystallises. “You’ve been before, haven’t you?”

Her mouth ticks with something that isn’t a smile, but isn’t entirely sad either. “I was seven,” she says, “and I’m not going to talk about it.” 

As if sensing something, the Child looks up at her with his enormous eyes, and cheeps sympathetically. Cara holds him a little tighter, actually smiling now. “You’re going to love it,” she tells the baby, who blinks at her, “and we’ll work on your dad.”

**3.**

Din has tracked down fugitives to dismal towns smaller than the hotel Greef has booked them into, an enormous series of wood-clad structures set in a specifically planted forest, full of rocks and faux-waterfalls. Even if he has no idea that it’s all Disney-related yet, the Child peers around him from his pod with wide-eyed fascination, and Din has to internally admit that this is certainly nicer and less tacky than he was expecting. They’re checked in by a smiling employee – everyone who works here is smiling, in a way that makes Din suspicious and maybe a bit defensive – who politely but firmly leads them to a secure lock-up, explaining that weapons are not allowed into the Parks. He knew this from his research, but Din still feels kind of annoyed as he places blasters, knives and grenades into the lockbox provided. He doesn’t mention that his armour has a flamethrower in it, and either the employee doesn’t know, or decides not to press it. 

The Child has been happily peering out of his pod, chirping and waving whenever he gets someone’s attention. Cara happens to be the one getting the details of their rooms at the moment the Child notices that many of the people around them are wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts, Minnie Mouse ears, and carrying plush toys of a whole variety of Disney characters, so Din gets to see some sort of realisation pass over his kid’s face, and he turns to Din, cheeping excitedly, waving his tiny hands.

“Yes,” Din agrees, and the Child lets out another chirp in his direction before twisting himself to avidly watch a group of children pass by, shiny balloons tied firmly to their wrists.

Din sighs, quietly, and makes a mental note: _buy the kid a balloon_.

Greef has booked them two adjoining rooms, which are reasonably decorated and not crammed full of Disney character stuff – “he told me he wanted to book us into the hotel with the _Little Mermaid_ rooms,” Cara remarked casually as they were walking over, “but he figured you’d actually murder him when we got back” – and Din will take what he can get. He puts the Child down on the double bed he isn’t planning to use, and goes to lock himself in the bathroom for a couple of minutes, to have a drink and wipe the worst of the Florida-induced sweat from his face. The door isn’t that thick, and he keeps one ear tuned for the indignant squeaking that means his kid has fallen from a height he wasn’t supposed to be at in the first place, but there are no thuds or shrieks for once.

When he gets back into the room, Cara has let herself in through the adjoining door, and is sitting watching the Child as he experiments with bouncing around on the bed with something that’s almost fondness on her face.

“Ready?” she asks, switching her attention to Din.

“We need to plan-” he starts, but she shakes her head.

“We’re taking him to the Magic Kingdom,” Cara says. “The kid has no idea where we are or what that means, let’s shove a giant magic castle in his face and see what happens.”

Din looks at his son, who is giggling to himself as he lurches around on the soft covers, and nods. “You’re leading this mission,” he tells her, scooping up the Child to put him back in his pod.

“Yes sir,” Cara responds, with a salute.

-

For someone who refuses to acknowledge that she came here as a child, and who has been claiming that her only preparation for Disney World was cutting the sleeves off a couple of shirts and stocking up on alcohol, Cara is very sure about where they’re going. Din follows her through the crowds of people, keeping one hand on the open pod even though it’s not like they can get separated. There’s a lot of people and noise and unnervingly upbeat music, and he’s glad that he’s inside his helmet, where at least he can feel slightly separated from the sea of _humanity_ around them. The Child peers around eagerly, occasionally looking up at Din inquisitively. The kid isn’t always good around large amounts of people, but he must be sensing that most of them are happy – bar a few frustrated parents and at least one toddler having a screaming tantrum that Din hopes his child doesn’t try to copy – because his ears are perked up, and he’s pressed up against the front of his pod, trying to see everything.

After the Child has nearly fallen out of his pod waving excitedly at the castle and Cara has insisted on taking a variety of photos of his little delighted face with and without the castle in the background – “Greef was weirdly militant about how much fun he wants the kid to have, and he wants visual proof” – Din helplessly follows her along with the tide of people round to the right.

“Where are we-”

“ _it’s a small world_ ,” Cara replies, without turning around. “He’ll love it, and, as a parent, you have to tolerate it.”

Din is pretty sure he read something about _it’s a small world_ in his research and had firmly decided that none of them were going to go on it, but somehow he doesn’t have it in him to argue, and instead follows Cara, his son bobbing in his little pod beside him, pointing at things and warbling to himself in what Din has come to know as a happy tone. That’s the important bit, after all; they’re here for the Child, not for themselves.

They leave the pod outside with the strollers that the human kids are using, and, carrying the excited Child, join the line. The music is almost unbearably cheerful, but the Child doesn’t notice, ears quivering with interest. Some of the kids nearest them, wearing glittery t-shirts and Minnie Mouse ears, are peering at the Child with interest, and burst into pleased giggles when he notices and waves at them. It reminds Din of Winta and her friends, and how quickly and easily they were drawn to his son. It’s easier to focus on the positive attention aimed at his child than on the sheer amount of noise and glitter in here; when Din looks at Cara, he finds her staring fixedly at the ceiling, looking like she’s trying to put herself into some kind of trance state. 

At the front of the line, a smiling employee in a bright striped outfit blinks twice at his Mandalorian armour without the grin slipping at all, then notices the Child and visibly melts. 

“Well, hello,” she says, and he obediently coos and waves at her from Din’s arms. He has never managed to work out if the Child is making up for years of probable neglect, or if he just _really_ loves attention; it’s probably a bit of both. “Are you excited?”

“It’s his first time,” Cara puts in, although she jerks her head to encompass both the kid _and_ Din, which he’s not sure that he appreciates.

The woman’s face lights up, and when she directs them to the quay where they get into the little boats, they find from the painted numbers that they’re going to be in the front. Cara’s grin is nothing short of triumphant, as a pastel-coloured boat pulls up, and she clambers neatly in, reaching up to take the Child from Din and settle him on the seat between them. Din doesn’t think he’s nearly as elegant getting into the craft, and it bobs unsettlingly under him as he sits down, but everything is fine as other people get into the boat behind them, chattering and laughing. He watches his curious son tilt his head, looking up at the lights with an interested expression. Cara’s look of anticipation is clear, and the Child squeaks in surprise as the boat lurches into motion.

It’s very bright, and very loud, and very glittery. Small animatronic human children sing a high-pitched song about unity, wearing outfits Din will assume are native to their countries, surrounded by animals he doesn’t recognise but which he assumes do not sing or dance in reality. The models aren’t droids, they aren’t even sentient enough for that, and that somehow makes them more unnerving. A variety of different languages bombard him; his helmet feed tries to translate some of them before it realises that it’s not calibrated for Earth languages, and the whole thing is kind of a sensory nightmare.

Din has been so distracted by… everything that the first he realises that his kid is enjoying himself is when a tiny body scrambles awkwardly over his knee, the Child determinedly making his way toward to side of the boat with the clear intention of joining the small singing animatronics. Din catches him, pulling him back toward safety, ignoring the indignant squeaking sounds.

“They’re just for looking at,” he says firmly, settling his son on his knee.

The Child looks up at him, ears drooping sulkily, but luckily at that moment the boat turns into another room full of yet more singing dolls, and his attention is caught by them. Din can’t remember ever seeing the kid so transfixed, eyes somehow even larger than normal, mouth open with something that looks like it might be joy. His ears have shot up again, and he looks around, shifting eagerly on Din’s leg as he tries to see everything. 

“Told you,” Cara says, and Din turns to see that she isn’t paying any attention to the actual ride, and is just watching the baby happily waving his little arms at the animatronics. It is, Din has to internally admit, ridiculously, enormously cute, and it is nice to see his kid having a good time.

He and Cara pretty much spend the rest of the time watching the Child enjoy himself, Din still periodically having to pull him back as he makes another excited leap for the water – he’s pretty sure the kid can’t swim – and when the majority of the animatronic children are just gently swaying figures in his peripheral vision, Din can handle the ludicrousness of the attraction much more easily. He can hear other adults in the boat exclaiming and pointing things out to each other, but he can ignore them in favour of looking at his own kid staring upwards in wonder, occasionally making excited little peeps when he particularly likes something.

They emerge back into the sunshine to go get the pod a while later, Cara taking a turn carrying the excitedly wriggling Child. 

“Yeah,” she says, in response to a selection of gurgles from the kid, “they’ve got some pretty nice stuff on this weird little planet, huh?”

She puts the Child back into his pod, and they turn to go, but they’re hit by something that feels like an invisible wall. Din tries to take a step and finds that his feet won’t move. He’s about to see if he can prime his flamethrower, damn whatever policy has about offensive weapons, when he looks down to see if his kid’s okay and finds that he’s standing at the front of his pod, small hands upraised, eyes closed, face screwed up in the concentration that means he’s using the Force.

“…okay,” he sighs, “we’ll go on it again.”

The same smiling employee is waiting at the front of the line, grinning even wider when she spots the baby.

“You liked it, then?” she asks, and the Child, who has been impatiently bobbing about in Din’s arms for the whole time they were waiting, ears twitching in time to the piped music, waves his hands delightedly.

“He did,” Cara confirms, and they’re sent to their space; not in the front of the boat this time, Din notes, but maybe it’ll be easier to stop his kid launching himself into the little tableaus if they’ve got more people around them.

The Child is just as excited the second time around, and Din and Cara take turns to pass him between them so he can see more things on each side of the boat. Din has learned that his son likes new experiences and new things to look at, as long as he feels safe in the strange environment, so this is perfect for him: bright, shiny, loud, crammed full of things to see, and probably wildly overstimulating as well. It might even be educational, although Earth is well behind much of the universe technologically, and Din doubts the geography and peoples of an obscure planet are going to come up every often in the Child’s future. 

When the ride ends and Cara stands to get out of the boat, the Child starts up an annoyed sort of wail that Din sincerely hopes is not about to turn into some kind of tantrum, because he’s been lucky so far, but their friend the ride employee spots the upset flailing that accompanies the wail and hurries over.

“Go round one more time,” she says in a loud whisper, waving a hand, and goes back to deal with the other people in the line. Din’s not sure what calm explanation she gives them for having to wait longer, but he’s grateful that he can settle the suddenly cheerful baby on his lap.

“Last time,” he says, sternly, as the Child peers up at him, blinking those enormous eyes like he’s never been badly behaved in his entire weirdly-long life.

Din is fairly certain that his song is going to be in his head until he dies, as the boat drifts them around for the third time. The Child is more familiar with the rooms now, excitedly leaning forward when they get to a bit that he likes, and demanding to be passed between the two of them when something more interesting is happening on Cara’s side of the boat. Din lets it all float past him, since he suspects he’ll be going on this ride a lot more before the vacation ends, and he should probably just make his peace with it. As they make their way toward the final room – the one that seems to contain children from all over the planet mixed together, plus about ten times more glitter – the baby starts squeaking and waving his arms upwards. 

“…oh,” says Cara, softly, following his line of sight, so Din looks up too.

Apparently at some point Earth decided to acknowledge that it gets visitors from across the universe, and wanted to include them: up near the ceiling are a series of star-shaped platforms, and more singing animatronic children are up there, but these ones are not from Earth, and the stupid song has been translated into Basic. The designers clearly thought it would be smartest to put easily recognisable races and peoples up there; there’s a Twi’lek boy, and a tiny Ewok holding a spear instead of hands with the little human girl beside him dressed and painted up like a Naboo queen; a Wookiee towers over all of them, roaring along in what Din thinks might actually be a fairly accurate Shyriiwook translation, next to a Mon Calamari of indeterminate gender, then a Chiss in a smart uniform. And next to the Chiss is another human girl, hair looped up in what cannot be anything other than Alderaanian braids; maybe Earth haven’t had time to update their ride, or they’re so far away out there that they don’t even know that the original planet is gone. The same could be said for the figure on the last star platform, metallic and shiny: a small, swaying Mandalorian.

Din opens his mouth to say that no Mandalorian would ever, _ever_ sing or sway or be caught fraternising like this with other races in a ridiculous over-emotional party, imaginary or otherwise, but what actually comes softly out of his mouth is also: “…oh.”

Cara sniffs once, and swallows loudly enough that Din can hear her, even over the swell of the music and the boat swinging into the final room of sharp white costumes and extra lights. “That’s… nice,” she says, quiet.

Din can think of a dozen answers, from claiming it’s ridiculous to have representations of races who aren’t from Earth on here, to going to find some kind of management and telling them that it’s disrespectful to have a Mandalorian up there, particularly one who, even from a distance, is obviously weapons free, but on his lap his child’s eyes are shining and his entire throat seems to have closed up, and all he can manage is: “yeah, it is.”

**4.**

It takes a little while for the Child to realise that he’s completely safe at Disney World: Din himself is still double-checking for exits and sightlines whether they’re riding on a maddeningly slow riverboat around a quiet enclosed lake, or sitting on a bench watching his kid demolish an enormous turkey leg that’s almost larger than he is. Din has taken the Child to all kinds of different worlds, but it’s admittedly true that to begin with a lot of those worlds had people on them who wanted to hurt or acquire the baby, and even now, firefights tend to break out more often than he’d like, even on easy jobs. The kid takes all this in his stride, but life has taught him to be cautious, and even when he’s interestedly exploring new environments, there’s a little hesitance in his movements, something unsure in the set of his ears that Din has learned to read. It takes a couple of days, but the Child seems to have concluded that they’re in a place where constant nice things happen to him, and his enthusiasm and interest in everything around him are a quiet joy to watch.

While nothing seems to have matched the unexpected delight of _it’s a small world_ , the Child has so far enthusiastically enjoyed every ride they’ve taken him on, which has been gratifying in a way that Din didn’t know actually existed. Sure, the ride based on the mermaid film the kid likes so much that even Din’s seen it a couple of times was full of yet more animatronics, and it was only some quick thinking on Cara’s part that stopped the kid from trying to attack the gigantic sea witch robot with the Force, but everyone came out okay and that was the important part. The kid _loved_ getting to sit in a giant hollowed-out elephant that flew up and span around, mostly because the height was controlled by a lever and Din let him drag it around as much as he wanted – which was cute, even if he is a little concerned that his child will have now decided that all levers can be played with again, even the ones on the _Razor Crest_ he’s explicitly banned from. And Din’s pretty sure all of them enjoyed squeezing into a giant cup that span around; he and Cara were strong enough to get it spinning as fast as the mechanism would allow, his son’s giddy laughter louder than the music.

“And today,” Cara announces cheerfully, “we introduce the kid to pirates.”

They discussed this over dinner last night, Cara eating her way through a mountain of grilled meat and carbs while Din kept an eye on the Child and his own selection of meat products, and counted down the time until he could go and order room service. Pirates seem to be pretty much the same throughout the galaxy, whatever the specifics of your planet’s situation or technology, and he’s not sure that they should be glorified into a theme park ride to take his child on.

“I loved it when I was a kid,” Cara informed him, expression daring him to ask questions, “and wherever you go, people will glorify pirates, smugglers, all those assholes.” She reached for more corn, while the kid made happy gnawing noises with a piece of steak. “And yes, I just said smugglers because my princess is shacked up with one, I know what face you’re making under that helmet.”

“I had more than one puck for that Solo guy,” Din muttered, and Cara just laughed at him.

Today, the Child peers around him with interest as they make their way to the boats, ears flicking with interest.

“Pirates of all kinds are criminals,” Din makes sure to tell him, “and all of them need returning to the authorities.” 

His son glances up at him, and coos. It’ll do as a response.

It gets darker once they’re in their boat, and Din settles the Child on his knee so he can see around him as they sail into blue-lit caverns. A melodramatic voice announces: _Dead men tell no tales_ from the ceiling; Din glances to Cara, whose expression holds something that might just be the little girl she once was, even with the facial tattoo and muscles that rival Din’s own. His kid likes singing dolls from around the world; Cara as a kid apparently liked this.

There’s more skeletons in the _Pirates of the Caribbean_ dioramas than in the _it’s a small world_ ones, more darkness and disembodied laughter; it’s a lot less cute than the other rides they’ve been on so far, and there’s not been a twee song yet either. Din hasn’t decided whether he’s enjoying this or not yet, but there are points in its favour. Even barely able to see Cara, he can feel the barely-repressed glee radiating off her; it’s nice, though he probably won’t tell her this.

When they next emerge into the light, it’s to a giant old-fashioned boat, with an animatronic pirate yelling and waving a cutlass as explosive cannons fire blanks around them. Din becomes aware of movement on his knee; the Child is shuffling backwards a little, toward Din’s chest, ears drooped.

“It’s okay,” Din tells him quietly, but it’s possibly lost under the shouts of the pirate town they’ve sailed into, people waving guns around and shouting, music and breaking glass playing on the soundtrack. These animatronics are much more human in appearance, which somehow makes them less sinister to him than the child robots, but the same possibly doesn’t apply to the Child, who is apparently trying to shrink into his coat. 

Din has done his best with the circumstances, but most aspects of his job aren’t exactly appropriate for babies, and even with fewer people trying to kidnap or kill the Child, he’s still been forced to take his kid into a bunch of places that he probably shouldn’t have. They’ve definitely been to worse places than this imaginary town, based on the history of a planet neither of them live on, and the Child reacted to all of those places with his usual brand of cheerful curiosity with no concern for his own safety. Now, in this artificial environment, the Child is squirming on Din’s lap, ears pressing down flat against his head, only his eyes visible above the collar of his coat as he peers around. 

The next room features pirates pillaging a town; there’s impressive false fire, and animatronics of merrily drunk people marauding, singing, waving torches and loot around. Din is reluctantly entertained by the ambience created, even if he could do without yet another catchy song from Disney World, but he’s distracted now by the Child, who, instead of leaning eagerly forward and trying to escape the vehicle like he usually does, has his back pressed to Din’s stomach, utterly silent. As they pass under a bridge with a merrily drunk animatronic waving a burning bottle, the Child squeaks, and tries to leap out of Din’s arms into the bottom of the boat, out of sight. He holds him tightly, and the baby lets out a high-pitched whine, looking up at him reproachfully.

“It’s okay,” Din tells him again, louder, as they pass into the next room: a lone pirate animatronic singing to himself, and, beyond him, the merciful light that means they can get off. Din hasn’t minded this ride at all, but he’s worried about his kid, how he’s trying to huddle himself into a little ball in Din’s lap. Even Cara is looking now, reaching out to stroke one of the Child’s ears gently.

“This is unexpected,” she remarks, as the Child peers sadly up at her, eyes looking somehow even bigger in the half-dark.

“Yeah,” Din agrees, soft, making sure his hold on the kid is gentle but firm; he doesn’t want him trying to escape again and hurting himself, but he wants him to feel reassured, that Din is here with him. 

The Child remains quiet, ears lowered, as they get out of the boat and make their way upwards and outside.

“I had no idea he was going to react like that,” Cara says, for perhaps the third time. “He’s been remarkably chill about the many awful situations you’ve gotten him into.”

Din says nothing; Cara isn’t necessarily expecting a reply, and he doesn’t know what to say. Some of the other children on the ride hadn’t much liked the dark, or the skeletons, but he doesn’t remember even the smallest ones reacting the way his child has, worried enormous eyes peeping miserably about. His ears twitch a little when they come back into the sunshine, but he’s much too still and quiet. They walk back to where they left the pod with the strollers, and Din puts the Child in, gently tucking his favourite blue blanket around him. Then he crouches down, so he’s roughly on some kind of eye level, even if the Child can’t see his eyes and they’re a little uneven.

“You’re safe here,” he says, slow and clear, “and you are always safe with me. I will never let anything happen to you.”

The Child blinks a couple of times, and his ears are still lowered, but Din thinks he’s sitting slightly taller than before, his nose almost visible again. Din stands up again, and looks to where Cara is standing, mouth twisted.

“I have an idea,” she says, “c’mon.”

This is how Din finds himself sitting on a bench in the sunshine, watching his son watch the people walking by with mild interest, and waiting on Cara’s secret mission. He doesn’t know if the Child has lingering trauma from before he even met Din, when he was in unimaginable situations that apparently involved Disney cartoons but could have contained anything else, or if this is Din’s fault, for taking him to places no one should take children, for dragging him halfway around the galaxy being chased by bounty hunters and worse. The guilt is distracting, but he can never tell what the Child can sense and what he can’t, and he doesn’t want to make the situation any more complicated by giving the Child emotions that aren’t his own.

Cara appears, carrying two cups piled with some kind of swirled dessert. She licks the tip off one, then holds the other one out towards the Child, whose head pops up a little more.

“You’re going to bribe him with food?” Din asks.

“I’m going to improve things with ice cream,” Cara replies, letting Din take the ice cream and a tiny spoon. “We’ll have to deal with the sugar crash later, but, hey, I’m pretty sure it’s your turn to do Bath Night.”

“It’s cold,” Din warns the Child, holding out the spoon; the baby ignores him in favour of eating the whole mouthful, and then making a half-pleased, half-startled squawking sound. He swallows, and then holds his hands out, ears perking. Din loads up another spoon, and they repeat the process, down to the surprise on the kid’s face.

“Never fails,” Cara remarks, and Din doesn’t have to turn to know that she’s smiling.

**5.**

Din finishes towel-drying his hair and glances at his reflection in the mirror; he doesn’t have much use for vanity, and the only person who sees his face these days is him, but, well, it pays to check from time to time. Usually, he’s looking for bruises or contusions he might have missed, because a helmet can only protect your head so far, but after a few fight-free days in Disney World he’s looking considerably healthier than he normally does. Finally, he hangs the towel back on the rail and slides the helmet back on over his damp hair; Cara gave him an hour or so once his room service had arrived to eat dinner and shower, but she doesn’t want to have to babysit forever.

When he walks through the door that adjoins their rooms, Din finds Cara sprawled on her bed, talking to a holo of Greef. She looks up and rolls her eyes at Din before turning back to the conversation; he sits down on the room’s spare chair, so that he doesn’t have to get involved.

“I’m just saying, I sent you there so the kid could meet Mickey Mouse,” Greef is saying.

“You did not specify that,” Cara points out. “You just said you wanted proof he was having a good time, and we’ve sent you lots of that.”

Din will be keeping a number of the proof photos, videos and holos for himself, but he’s happy about pretending they’re only visually recording the Child’s adventures for Greef (well, and Kuiil, and Omera, and Pelli Motto: a surprising amount of people are invested in the kid’s welfare after all). 

“He loves Mickey Mouse!” Greef insists. “Take him to meet a giant mouse, he’ll love it.”

“We’re working on it,” Cara replies. “He’s scared of a bunch of pirate robots, I don’t know if he’s ready for giant mice yet.”

The room is very quiet; Din wonders what Cara has done with the Child, and if she’s shut him in the bathroom again. Technically this works fine, although the kid did manage to cause a minor flood last time, although his unrepentant confused face did endear him to the Disney-employed plumber who came to clear up the mess. He can’t hear any sounds of merry destruction coming from the bathroom, though.

“Stop trying to backseat pilot our vacation,” Cara says firmly, and adds: “good _night_ , Karga” before she disconnects.

“Where’s-” Din begins, and Cara tips her head to the other, unused bed. Din hadn’t really registered it, distracted by Greef’s demands, but the blankets have been pulled off and piled in a heap on the mattress; after a moment, Din realises there’s slight movements from somewhere inside the pile, like someone very small is navigating the dark caves of fabric. Cara holds a finger to her lips and winks; after sitting in silence for a minute or two more, Din hears a soft giggle from the blanket pile, and a corner of it lurches like the kid maybe jumped forward.

“He’s having fun,” Cara says, “he’s safe, he’s in one place, and it’ll probably be hard for him to trash the room from under a duvet.”

If anyone could manage it, Din is pretty sure it’s his kid. Still, Cara’s right about it keeping the baby in one place, and the little cackles and shifts of blankets are easy to keep track of.

“Do we have to take him to meet someone dressed as a character?” Din asks. The helmet makes it easier to make whining come across as a calm, adult question. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to line up for hours to wave his kid at a stranger in a weird outfit; on the other hand, he hasn’t wanted to do half the things they’ve done at Disney World, including going on vacation in the first place, and yet his son has enjoyed most of it and Din is willing to admit that it hasn’t been as bad as he thought.

“I figured we can take him to a parade,” Cara says easily, leaning to grab a water glass that definitely does not contain water off her nightstand. “If he freaks out, we just take him back on more rides; if he doesn’t, we can take him to meet his heroes.”

She had that answer all ready; Din suspects Cara did a lot more planning for Disney World than she’s claiming, though he’s not mentioning it because she’ll never admit it, either way. Instead, he agrees on their plan for the next day, and gets up to rescue his son from his blanket cave system and see if he can persuade him to sleep.

-

Cara has vanished off to find a bathroom, so Din takes advantage of her absence to take the Child into a nearby store. Plucking the kid from his pod, he holds him close to a display of Minnie Mouse ears: “so, what pair are we buying for Cara?”

He isn’t always sure if the Child knows what he’s talking about, or if he does and just elects not to understand most of the time, but, either way, the kid reaches out toward the various designs of ears with interested little hands. Din would absolutely buy one of the pairs of ears with an enormous multicoloured veil attached if he thought Cara could be persuaded into them, but years of bounty hunting have given him a pretty good idea of just how far he can push his luck. The Child seems to like every pair of ears Din shows him, which is not surprising, but he doesn’t reach out to grab any of them until Din holds up a relatively plain pair, covered in black sequins, with a bronze sequin bow. The baby coos appreciatively, looking up at Din, small hand clutching the end of the headband.

Cara turns up a few minutes later, having somehow also acquired herself a waffle shaped like Mickey Mouse’s face. She breaks off one of the ears and feeds it to the Child, who gazes up at her with the adoring expression he saves for anybody who gives him food. 

“He got you a present,” Din tells her.

“Did he,” Cara says flatly, as Din hands her the ears.

“He picked them out,” Din says, avoiding mentioning that it was his idea in the first place, and the baby chirps when Cara looks suspiciously at him.

Still, she slides the hairband on, glaring at Din as her mouth nonetheless twists into something that’s nearly a smile. “For him, then,” she says, firmly.

“For him,” Din agrees, like he didn’t suspect she was just looking for an excuse, and they head off to find the Child a parade.

They stake out a place near Main Street, successfully stopping people from pushing in front of them with a combination of Din’s armour and Cara’s glaring, which hasn’t lessened in intensity even with the addition of the Minnie Mouse ears. There are a lot of loud, cheerful announcements as the countdown to the parade commences, which are irritating, but at least the kid is peering out of his pod at all of the people, particularly the excited children, babbling softly to himself and occasionally waving at someone. Din’s main experience with parades are ones of military strength from the Empire, the thought of which still leave a sour taste in his mouth, but presumably Disney’s idea of one will be somewhat different.

The music is loud and cheerful, and everyone pushes forward around them as the first of the dancers and floats approach. Din takes the Child out of the pod, holding him tightly to protect him from the crush of people around them, and watches the inquisitive flicker of the kid’s ears as he gazes at the approaching procession. There are a lot of princesses on the first upcoming float, and the Child twists to look confusedly up at Din before he looks back; even though it’s too loud to hear his enquiring chirp, Din sees his mouth move anyway. It takes a little longer, and then the ears shoot up as the baby recognises the characters at the front of the float, and starts some excited wriggling that’s quite difficult to hold onto.

“I guess that answers that question,” Cara remarks.

The characters wave at the crowd and pose, and half the audience appear to be trying to film it rather than just enjoy themselves; it’s all stupidly perky and brightly-coloured, but the Child’s ears are twitching in time to the music, and many of the other little kids around them are waving and grinning and bouncing, and Din is reluctantly willing to admit that this is all quite nice.

As the next float approaches, even Din can recognise who’s on it, and a moment or two later so does the Child; even over the cheering and music, Din hears his squeal of excitement, and he turns to look up at him.

“Yeah,” Din says, because it’s expected of him, “I can see Rapunzel too.”

While Din’s been avoiding too much knowledge of any of the Disney films for his own sanity, he’s seen _Tangled_ a few too many times because the Child likes it so much. Din tells himself it’s the shiny colours and the catchy songs, and not the story about a young woman imprisoned for much of her life before she gains her freedom, that mean the Child likes it so much. 

Rapunzel is wielding a frying pan, although she periodically stops to wave at the crowds; Din finds himself fervently hoping that she’ll wave at the bundle of excitement currently trying to escape his arms, little hands raised in delight at the approaching float. He’s prepared to try and stop the Child from doing… well, anything to the parade with his Force powers, but he’d prefer if he didn’t have to. Luckily, as the float sails past, Rapunzel looks down at their side, grinning; she somehow spots the Child, wiggling frantically, and blows a kiss.

“Awww,” Cara says, clearly trying for sardonic and falling pretty short.

The Child continues to be delighted with the parade, still occasionally looking up at Din to check that he’s seeing all this too, before going back to waving at the dancers and making happy cheeping noises. It’s all fine until a _Peter Pan_ float comes along, Captain Hook swinging from an anchor on it and melodramatically waving his fist at the crowd. Cara makes an amused snorting sound beside him, but Din’s attention snaps to his kid, who is frowning, ears drooping crossly.

“Hey,” he says, lifting and turning the Child so he can look at him, “you’re okay. You’re safe. You don’t have to do anything. Everything’s fine.”

The Child looks doubtful but Din holds him firmly until his tiny hands drop into a less defensive position, and only then does Din allow him to look back at the parade; the last thing some poor human dressed as a Disney villain needs is Din’s confused son Force choking him because he thinks he needs to defend everyone at the theme park. He’s grateful that the Child has saved his life more than once, but he is trying to work on not having a baby who immediately reacts with violence in new situations.

“Well, that’s one bullet dodged,” Cara says, leaning into Din. “What’re you gonna do for the giant fire-breathing mechanical dragon that’s coming up?”

Din looks down at his kid’s wobbling head, ears twitching happily as he waves at more characters, and is glad no one can see his grimace inside his helmet. 

“We’ll improvise,” he says, and pretends he can’t hear Cara laughing.

**6.**

Disney World have discreetly catered for people who can’t or won’t eat in public; behind a selection of themed doors in various lands are a range of small rooms for breastfeeding mothers, and off-worlders who cannot remove their breathing masks or helmets, or culturally must eat alone. Din is grateful for them because he doesn’t have to traipse back to the hotel for lunch, and Cara can either go off with the child for their own lunch, if they haven’t been already, or they can keep themselves entertained until he comes back.

Today, when he meets them, he finds that the Child now has little smiling suns painted on his round cheeks; a closer look reveals that they have the same design as the happy suns in _it’s a small world_. There’s also a slightly concerning amount of glitter. Cara is looking very pleased with herself, and has a skull and crossbones painted on the cheek that doesn’t have a rebel tattoo, with much less glitter. 

“He asked for it,” Cara says, shrugging one shoulder, like the Child has been capable of asking for anything this vacation, apart from occasionally making peeping sounds when he spots a food product until one is bought for him, or sulking quietly in his pod until they take him back on _it’s a small world_. 

“Sure,” Din replies. “You can be on bath duty tonight.”

They join the line inside the Town Square Theatre, the Child peering thoughtfully around as he always does when they go somewhere new. He was cautious for a couple of days after _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , but nothing else has happened to upset him since, and he’s back to being excited about new things. There’s not much for him to look at: a wide, carpeted hallway, crowded with adults and a lot of kids in various states of restlessness, and he settles down after a moment. Din tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade him to take a nap in his pod while he waits. Cara produces a bag of Mickey-shaped gummies, apparently from nowhere, and alternates feeding herself and the Child. He’s going to be a mess of delighted sugar later, but as Din says: he’s not doing Bath Night.

Eventually, they’re led through to a mock-up of a theatre, props and posters scattered around. The Child’s ears twitch happily when he notices the pictures of Mickey Mouse, because even though they’re in a place absolutely saturated with Mickey and Mickey-related images, he remains happy to see them, every time. Din plucks the kid out of his pod and doesn’t turn him around until the giant Mouse himself is ready to meet them.

It’s worth it for the surprised delight on the Child’s face, the way his ears flap upwards, eyes somehow getting even wider.

“Well, hello there!” Mickey Mouse says, face moving, and somewhere in the back of Din’s mind he decides that he’s not sure about the robotic head whose mouth moves and eyes blink, but he’s not here for him, he’s here for his kid. His happily cheeping kid, who is reaching out his arms toward Mickey with that expression he generally only saves for Din himself, or people who feed him.

“It’s lovely to meet you,” Mickey says, and laughs exactly like he does on television. The Child giggles in matching response. “Bring it in.”

Din lifts the Child up so he can see Mickey properly, lay his little hands on either side of his nose. He makes a solemn burbling sound, but his ears are still flapping happily, and Din swallows something thick in his throat. 

“He’s a fan,” he explains a little helplessly.

“I’m a fan of you too, buddy,” Mickey tells the kid, and holds out his arms.

Din is, for a second, reluctant to hand over the Child, before he remembers that they’re safe here, and even if for some reason a person dressed as Mickey Mouse _did_ have bad intentions toward the Child, he’s still in possession of a flamethrower. Mickey gently holds the baby to his chest and smiles at the staff member holding a camera, and Cara, who has been recording all of this. The Child coos, and then looks to Din and coos again. 

Mickey gives the Child back with a careful stroke of one of his ears, shakes Din’s hand, and tells them both to have a magical day.

“That was… not so bad,” Din says carefully, as they leave into yet another gift shop, the Child back in his pod giggling to himself. His chest feels a bit too tight, his eyes are a little watery.

“Not so bad,” Cara agrees, and when Din looks at her, he sees that her pirate face paint looks a little smudged and damp. Cara sees him looking, rolls her eyes, and punches him in the arm, and even though she can’t see, Din manages to return her slightly crooked smile.

-

A soft swish wakes Din up in the middle of the night. He’s been sleeping without his armour, after a couple of days of consideration, but slipping his helmet back on is the work of an instinctive second, and another second to grab for his gauntlet. He’s pretty sure he knows what’s happening here, but, just in case, it’s good to have a weapon vaguely close.

“Hey,” he says, into the darkness.

There’s a guilty silence, and then a soft shuffling noise. One, then two.

Din leans over and flicks on the light beside his bed.

He finds the Child hanging from the door handle, little hands clutching at it, eyes wide and startled in the sudden brightness.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning,” Din says, getting out of bed.

He gently wraps his hands around the Child, and pulls at him until his grip gives and he looks up at Din with an indignant squawk. He crossly flails for the door as Mando carries him back over to his pod, the blankets ruffled, his preferred blue one lying on the floor.

“You have to sleep,” Din tells him firmly, though all he gets is a tragic look, the Child’s ears drooping, and he’s very much aware that the minute he turns the lights out, the kid is going to get back out of his crib and try to escape again. He considers it, and then decides it’s time for the big guns. “Everything is closed,” he says, “even Mickey’s asleep. You don’t want to wake him up, do you?”

He isn’t completely sure if he’s managed to get through, but although his sad expression doesn’t abate, he does lie down and allow Din to wrap his blankets around him securely. “We can have a new adventure in the morning,” Din adds, and goes to turn the light off.

He lies awake a while longer in the dark, and doesn’t take his helmet back off until he hears the Child’s slow sleeping breathing.

**7.**

The store is pretty crowded, people stocking up on various souvenirs. Din has plenty of money for once, and is on a vacation he didn’t pay for, but it doesn’t stop him flinching at the cost of some of the things, and he’s glad the Child is safely in his pod, where he can’t touch many of the more fragile things, no matter how hard he reaches over the railing and makes grumbling sounds. He already knows the kid is drawn to shiny things regardless of what they are, and that proves just as true for a shop as it has done on the _Razor Crest_.

Cara watches all this in amusement, leaning casually against the Child’s pod and smoothing the stickers on the top. There’s an attraction based on one of the movies about toys that the Child doesn’t seem that interested in and Din hasn’t seen, but you get to sit in a car and fire a plastic gun at a variety of florescent targets. Even holding the Child’s gun for him so he could paw at the trigger with his little hands, Din still scored into the top bracket of scores – as did Cara; she did slightly better than him, but she wasn’t encumbered by an enthusiastic baby trying to use a fake weapon that was far too big and heavy for him – and received a special sticker from a staff member in recognition of this. He of course gave it to his son, but stuck it on the pod before the kid could get ideas and stick it on his helmet – he’s not completely sure it would’ve come off well – and Cara put hers on beside it. Apparently Mando’s kid is the top space ranger in this galaxy and, well, he kind of likes that.

“You know you’re going to end up taking about half this store home with you,” Cara remarks, deftly persuading the Child’s curious hands away from a shelf of plastic pens that look like they could clatter to the floor all over the place. 

“He can have _one_ soft toy,” Din says, like he’s been saying all trip. The kid could use something soft to go with his blanket in his crib; Din barely remembers his own childhood toys, they were lost when his home was destroyed and his parents were killed, but he remembers that they _existed_ in the first place.

“Mmmm, good luck with that,” Cara says dryly, gently guiding the pod over toward the mountains of plush toys in the shape of every conceivable Disney character ever created. There are a few adults picking them up and waving them at each other, and far more children gathered about, studiously choosing their own toys, a couple of little ones crying as their parents take toys they don’t want or can’t afford out of their hands.

The Child coos at all the toys, eyes widening, ears perking, and Din reflects that Cara has a point: it’s going to be very hard to deny that tiny face anything. “Nothing bigger than you are,” he amends sternly, and Cara snickers.

Whether he knows he can have one or not, the Child studies all the plushes intently; Din finds himself picking up random ones, both from movies he knows and movies he doesn’t, and waving them at him to see what reaction they get. Sometimes the Child waves back, but he doesn’t seem as enthusiastic about any of them as he is about, say, ice cream. Cara has disappeared off into the shopping crowds and for a moment Din feels abandoned, out of his depth. Shoot-outs he can do. Shopping for kids, he’s less sure about.

He’s way too relieved when Cara reappears, pushing her way back through the crowds of dithering shoppers and waving a small toy in her hand. It’s a little Mickey Mouse; he looks very soft, dressed in pale blue instead of his usual colours, and he’s not all that much bigger than Cara’s hand.

“They make these for human babies,” Cara explains, giving him to Din. The toy looks cute in the palm of his glove, embroidered eyes gazing benignly up at him. He holds it out to the Child, who has been making annoyed, ignored noises, to see if he likes it.

Immediately, the Child reaches out his hands, and Din carefully hands it over, watching the Child grip Mickey’s little plush arm in one tiny fist, cooing at him.

“I think we have a winner,” Cara says, but her expression is more pleased than smug.

Din looks to where a human toddler is having a tantrum on the floor of the store, while its parent patiently returns several plushes to the shelves they originally came from.

“Thanks,” he says, “but you’re the one who has to pry it off him so you can pay for it.”

-

Overall, they’ve been living reasonably regimented days: spending the day in one of the Parks that has things the kid will like, taking various breaks so that all of them can eat, and returning to the hotel at a decent time so the Child can be fed, bathed and put to bed before it gets late and he goes back to his favourite sleep pattern, which is to stay awake for as long as possible and then pass out at an inconvenient time. Din’s still slowly learning about fatherhood, but he got the importance of a regular sleep schedule very quickly. He and Cara take it in turns to keep an eye on the Child, and it’s pretty soundproof when his pod is closed, so they can watch Earth television and Cara can drink her smuggled spotchka and they can manage a quiet but not bad evening.

Having finally persuaded the Child to nap during an overlong line for _it’s a small world_ – Din is beginning to suspect that song is going to be spinning around his head for the rest of his life – they stay in the Park for dinner, with plans to stay until it closes. The Child gets increasingly interested as it gets darker – he’s used to being sent to bed by now, after all – and he’s definitely had way too much cotton candy today, and it takes both Din and Cara to persuade him to stay in his pod while they stake out a place reasonably near to the castle to watch the night’s fireworks from. Hundreds of other people also want to watch the show and even Din’s intimidating armour and Cara’s preferred sour expression don’t buy them much breathing space. It would help if they could get the Child to sleep for a while in his pod before it all begins, but he’s way too enthralled by everything happening around them and the castle in the distance, all lit up with bright white lights.

“How’re we gonna get him not to Force implode the fireworks?” Cara asks eventually. She’s gotten a giant plastic bucket of popcorn from somewhere and periodically pops a kernel into the Child’s mouth; Din eyes up the size of the bucket and concludes they’re going to be extracting the kid from it at some point in the near future, because he’s gotten used to the fact that if something is the right size and shape, the Child absolutely _will_ clamber into it, but that’s a problem for later on, anyway.

“We’re gonna hope for the best,” Din replies, reaching out to brush a stray flake of popcorn off the head of the little plush Mickey, which has barely left the Child’s side since he was bought. It eases something in Din’s chest, to see his child asleep with the soft toy clutched in one hand, like he’s done something right to give his kid something like the remains of a normal childhood. One day, when Cara was taking the Child on the _Peter Pan_ ride – another set of animatronic tableaus for a movie Din hasn’t seen – and he was off getting himself some lunch, he also ducked into a store and bought three more of the Mickey toys. His lifestyle his haphazard at best, and if the toy gets lost, he doesn’t want to be without a back-up. He hasn’t stayed alive this long without being prepared, after all.

His kid looks up and chirps enquiringly, so Din brushes one of his upturned ears in the same way he brushed the toy, and the Child giggles and turns his attention to Cara – or, more accurately, Cara’s popcorn bucket.

When the endless perky announcements finally broadcast that the show is about to start, Din picks up the Child and puts him on his shoulder so he can see; it’s possibly obnoxious for the people trying to see behind him, but all around them, people are hoisting up their kids, and they’re a lot taller than his tiny kid. Cara tucks her popcorn bucket into the pod and closes it, and as bright music begins, Din listens to his son shifting excitedly on his shoulder, cooing to himself. 

Images from various films are projected onto the castle itself, shifting and dancing in time to the medley of music, and Din feels his child jump when the first fireworks explode brilliantly in the black sky. He reaches up a reassuring hand to steady him, and says: “it’s okay, they’re just to look at, everything’s fine, it’s good.”

The Child makes a few more uncertain cheeping noises and shifts from foot to foot, but when no one around them panics and the fire doesn’t come anywhere near he eventually settles to watch the display. All around them, people make noises of delight and wonder, all of them drawn together in this moment, with these glittering fiery lights above them.

It’s going to be difficult to leave this gentle cocoon, Din finds himself thinking: there’s plenty that he won’t miss, but it’ll be hard to train the Child back into remembering that he’s not allowed to touch any buttons or levers, that explosions and fire are dangerous rather than entertaining, and that every single person he meets won’t immediately be wreathed in smiles and delighted cooing. Although it’s fair that the last one has often proven itself, even out in the dark cruel galaxy.

He hears his son make a happy noise of surprise as an even larger firework explodes above them, sparks falling in showers of gold, and the emotive music swells and soars around them. Even with the Child resting against his helmet, Din risks turning his head to look at Cara, whose eyes are glistening, reflecting the hundreds of little lights in front of them, her jaw working silently. He considers it and then puts an arm around her shoulders. Cara goes stiff and he thinks she thinks she’s going to pull away; but after a second she leans into him a little instead, head against his shoulder.

It’s… peaceful, even with the explosions and the music and the lights on the castle and the dense crowd around them cheering and singing along and gasping in time to the display, just standing here, his excited little boy letting out little peeps of sound, Cara entirely silent on his other side.

“Okay,” he says slowly, “don’t tell Greef, but this may not have been the worst idea in the universe.”

Cara laughs; it sounds a little thick. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I won’t.”

Above them, the sky fills with smoke and light and colours, the music rising to a crescendo, the fireworks glittering like stars that shine on and on and on.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Your author is a broke British millennial, so I can only afford to go to Disneyland Paris, but I thought sending Mando et al to France was one crack step too many, so I've watched endless walkthrough videos. Thanks to my twitter feed who answered my many questions, like, "why aren't there as many skeletons on _Pirates of the Caribbean_ as there are in France?" and to Sarah in particular who Disney-picked the first half for me.  
> \- [These](https://www.shopdisney.com/minnie-mouse-sequined-ear-headband-with-belle-bronze-bow-400912964078.html?isProductSearch=0&plpPosition=57) are Cara's ears, I want them a lot, tbh.  
> \- They're staying in the [Disney Wilderness Lodge](https://www.disneyworld.co.uk/resorts/wilderness-lodge-resort/) and I didn't have it in me to try and write a scene where Cara takes the baby with floaties in the pool while Mando watches in full armour from the side, but you should definitely imagine it because it's charming.  
> \- If you're like "why are they only in the Magic Kingdom" it's because there isn't a Parisian equivalent of EPCOT or the Animal Kingdom etc, so I have no experience there, and it seemed... hard. And also this fic is already 12k.  
> \- If you want to discuss Mando and co/see bad selfies of me literally weeping over Baby Yoda's face at 1 am because lockdown is a TIME, I'm @shehulking over on twitter; I'm locked for discretion but shoot me a tweet or comment here and I'll let you in.


End file.
